Spelling.School · How to spell

How to spell protection

hear itpro·tec·tion/prə'tɛkʃən/nounSilent and tricky

What it means: A means of keeping safe from harm or danger.

In a sentence: The knight wore armor for protection.

The part people get wrong

Watch for an unstressed vowel that is hard to hear. Often misspelled as protction or protektion.

Same family: protected, protective, protector, protectionism, protectionist. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: Protection comes from Latin 'protegĕre,' meaning 'to cover in front' or 'to shield.' Over time, the word gained a criminal sense, referring to money paid to gangsters in exchange for being 'shielded' from the very violence they threatened.

Patterns it uses: The unstressed vowel (schwa) · -tion, -sion or -cian?

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